GEO 101 World Human Geography
Spring 2008
WWW Resources: Economic and Political Geographies

The Geography of Maquiladora Development, Industrial Location, Industrialization and Deindustrialization, Economic Growth and Decline in the Sioux Empire, Globalization, Information Technology, and Economic Development, Recitation: The Geography of Commercial Agriculture--Then and Now, The Von Thunen Model, Development and Famine Relief, Niger and the Sahel, Electoral Geography, Amendment 2, Rio Blanco County, Recitation: The Geography of Nations and States, War in Iraq, Soverignty and China, Former Yugoslavia, European Union

The Geography of Maquiladora Development

• An Unfashionable Cause by Andrew Ross from FEED "At the busiest part of the Christmas shopping season, Santa Claus was arrested in midtown Manhattan in the full glare of TV cameras. His crime: civil disobedience in front of Lord & Taylor, where he joined labor unionists and workers to protest the sweatshop conditions that had produced many of the clothes being sold in the upscale department store."
• The Guilded Cage: The Allure of Nogales' Maquilas After the Peso Crash from The Tucson Weekly Dec. 5, 1996 by J.E. Rally. An excellent article chronicling the local problems associated with Maquiladoras in the border town of Nogales
• Anger in Nogales: Border Youths Get Rad from The Tucson Weekly July 18,1996 by J.E. Relly. "ON A WEEKEND afternoon last Sunday, July 14, numerous gringos buying sombreros and swilling Tecate in Nogales, Sonora, got an eyeful as several hundred binational activists ambled past, protesting government repression, the sellout to foreign interests and injustices against Latino immigrants in the U.S."
• Anyone interested in the human realities of maquiladora development should read the article on Juarez, Mexico in December's Harper's Magazine (available at most bookstores and magazine shops). the article concerns the work of documentary "street photographers" who have been recording the gruesome effects of rapid change in this border town. The author points out that average weekly wages are now around $20 to $25 dollars, and that the costs of necessities are not that much cheaper than in the US: prices are about 90% what they are here. The result: a massive increase in the underground economy including the drug trade and prostitution. There are 'optimistically" about 250 murders a year in Juarez, and something like 450 people go missing each year, most of them teenage girls and young women. The article is one of the most moving -- and horrifying -- things I have read in a long time. -- Don (Editor's Note--the message is from Don Mitchell for whom I started doing this web site as a graduate student. I keep this here, for historical purposes just in case you are interested. I don't know what year the article was published.)

• Multinational Monitor on-line An excellent resource for finding out about what multinational corporations are up to. Allows you to search for information by corporation.

• Nike
• "The NIKE Code of Conduct" by GoodWorks International, LLC A Report on Conditions in International Manufacturing Facilities for NIKE, Inc. Andrew Young's Report. (Note: this is from a copy on another website. It looks to be identical to the original.
• Nike's Response to Andrew Young's Report on the Nike Code of Conduct This link has gone dead..

Industrial Location

• Welcome to Silicorn Valley by Peter Maass from Wired. Why has the rual agricultural town of Fairfield, Iowa become a major telecommunications center?

The Geography of Industrialization and Deindustrialization

• Thinking Big by Jeff Greenwald from Wired detailes Malaysia's plans to build a "multimedia supercorridor" to promote economic development.
• Michael Moore's home page The home page created and maintained by the the filmaker behind Roger and Me (the film that we saw a clip from in class), Pets or Meat (the sequel/update to Roger and Me), TV Nation, Canadian Bacon, and the recent book Downsize This!
• A Town Betrayed: Oil & Greed in Lima, Ohio By Marc Cooper from The Nation Details the colosing of an oil refinery in Lima, Ohio.

Economic Growth and Decline in the Sioux Empire (related web sites)

• Money Online: Best Places 1997
• City of Sioux Falls Homepage
• Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce You can read about the industrial park and development incentives here.
• State of South Dakota Homepage See especially the page about doing business in South Dakota. "Doing business in South Dakota just makes sense. South Dakota is one of only two states with no corporate income tax, no personal income tax, no personal property tax and no business inventory tax. South Dakota has a unique philosophy when it comes to doing business. We believe that if you make a profit, you should keep that profit. Consider South Dakota for your next business location. It's a decision you won't regret." Also check out the Community Profile for Sioux Falls.
• Gateway 2000 Corporate Information

Globalization, Information Technology, and Economic Development

• Plotting Away in Margaritaville by Charles Platt from Wired "On a steamy Caribbean island, Vincent Cate and 80 cypherpunks gathered to make the global financial system safe from predators. Including governments."
• Bordering on Chaos by Peter Katel from Wired "There are stranger places to see the latest in complexity theory in action, but delivering cement in Mexico is a pretty good start."
• The Airline of the Internet by Todd Lappin from Wired An article on the importance of overnight package delivery to industry focusing on Federal Express.

Subsistence Agriculture

• Reciprocity, Exchange And Contract "The importation of a law of contract has not introduced a totally strange and unfamiliar phenomenon to this country. Exchange activity and the resolution when necessary of conflicts arising from such activity is, and has been for a long time, an integral part of life at the village level." An interesting article on similarities and difference among contract law and traditional exchange practices by Nicholas Seddon, University of Papua New Guinea.
• Gwembe Tonga Simulation Information on swidden agriculture in Africa along with a "Sim-Swidden" simulation for those of you with Macs.
• The following Links relate to a recitation reading that was used in previous semesters but which are nevertheless useful.
  • What Tribe is That?
    • An excellent resource for learning about the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea. See especially the sites listed below:
      • Tente Village, Mendi Mentioned in the article by Reader
      • The Tungei Famous for their manufacture of stone axes (until the Australians came). Also includes a picture of one of those valuable pigs. These are no ordinary "Guinea Pigs!"
      • An Old Man's Needs "He was born perhaps four years before the turn of the century and would have been in his middle to late thirties at the coming of the Australians."
  • A Sweetpotato Sampler Yep, them sweet spuds is on-line!

Recitation 8: The Geography of Commercial Agriculture--Then and Now

• In the Strawberry Fields by Eric Schlosser from The Atlantic Monthly. An excellent article that looks at the true cost of having fresh strawberries. Examines the need for cheap labor, supplied for the most part by legal and illegal Mexican immigrants. Required reading for recitation.
• Sammy Salad-In-A-Bag Takes you an a tour of Dole's Salad Factory Not to be missed! Notice the migrant workers picking lettuce. Also, note that their salad production areas are located in the middle of a desert!!! What makes it possible to produce bagged salad here? See also Cool Stuff About Lettuce hosted by Lucy Iceberg Lettuce and Rita Romaine Lettuce and the more general Cool Stuff About Fruits and Vegetables. For the geographically inclined (which should be all of you) visit Cool Stuff About Chilean Fruit hosted by Gus Grapes! Contrast these following web sites which document some not so cool stuff about the situations of the people (not necessarily Dole workers) who make our eating fruits and vegetables possible.
• Farmworkers/Colonias A nice page of links about farmworkers and and people living in colonias, unincorporated communities on the U.S. Mexico border that suffer from inadequate housing, infrastructure and poverty. From the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
• A Profile of U.S. Farm Workers: Demographics, Household Composition, Income and Use of Services from the U.S. Department of Labor. The recitation readings describe situations that seem too unjust to be true. Before you dismiss the recitation readings as pure propaganda take a look at the findings of this report from the Department of Labor.
• Fighters on the Farm Front: Oregon's Emergency Farm Labor Service 1943-1947 An online photo exhibit from the Oregon State University Archives and the Oregon State Archives. Documents efforts by Oregon's Emergency Farm Labor Service to train, place, house farm workers to make up for the labor shortage and the need for greater agricultural output during World War II. Read about the Women's Land Army, the Victory Farm Volunteers, and much more!
• Putting Down Roots: Migrant Workers in Utah are Leaving the Nomadic Farm Life From the Salt Lake Tribune. A provocative article describing tensions between former migrant farm workers who have settled in small largely white Utah towns as they fill jobs at local agricultural processing plants in need of workers and the longtime Anglo residents.
• Home page of the United Farm Workers
• AFL-CIO Executive Council Statement December 16, 1996 on the recent Strawberry Workers March - April 13, 1997
• The U.F.W. Picks Strawberries Watsonville represents the largest, most intense organizing drive in America. by David Bacon from The Nation

The Von Thunen Model

• The Von Thunen Model by Matt Rosenburg A nice description of how the Von Thunen Model works from the Mining Company Geography Web site.

Development and Famine Relief

• USAID Famine Early Warning System An excellent web site that describes current efforts to predict and prevent famine in Africa. Includes current reports of vulnerability for specific regions and as an added bonus includes a kids page!
• World Bank The world bank funds development projects around the world. Here you'll find descriptions of development projects, on-line bank publications, and information on other activities.

Niger and the Sahel

• The latest (1996) Niger Vulnearbility Assessment from the USAID Famine Early Warning System
• The latest (1996) Sahel Vulnerability Assessment from the USAID Famine Early Warning System
• A Sahel Journey / Cycle Touring in West Africa A short essay by John D. Ford concerning a bicycling tour of the Sahel. Excellent discussion of local landscape and people and of his culture shock.
• Desertification - a threat to the Sahel Describes processes causing desertification in the Sahel and includes a short description of peanut farming in Niger and it's environmental and social consequences. By the Eden Project.
• Poverty and Economic Development by Yves Bajard A critique of another paper (apparently on-line) that nevertheless gets at the idea of the development of underdevelopment that was presented in class.

Electoral Geography

• Boulder Community Network: Government and Political Center Has election results.
• Denver Post Election Coverage
• Rocky Mountain News Election Coverage
• Mexican Electoral Geography
• The Center for Voting and Democracy Contains information on proportional systems of voting used in many places throughout the world but not in the US.
• "I'm all right, John": voting patterns and mortality in England and Wales, 1981-92 George Davey Smith, Daniel Dorling Medical Geography and Electoral Geography come together here. Is there a link between mortality and voting patterns? Judge for yourself.
• Problems With Political Redistricting
• Election UK A web site covering United Kingdom elections with a geographical edge. If you've got a VRML plug-in for your browser there's a 3-D virtual map of 1997 UK election results. The maps are pretty cool in that they show both election results color coded but also show the number of people voting and hense where the electoral power is. London looks like a big red (labour) mountain emerging from blue (conservative) flatlands.
• Racial hot potato tossed to Supreme Court: Gerrymandering question stirs anger on both sides from CNN. You should have read about gerrymandering in your text. Here's a relatively recent case of gerrymandering.

Amendment 2

• Text of the Amendment 2--Site has dissappeared. If you know of another location where this is posted please let me know.
• Various transcripts, rulings and briefs concerning Amendment 2 from the Queer Resources Directory including:
  • Transcript of Judge H. Jeffrey Bayless' ruling declaring Colorado's Amendment 2 unconstitutional
  • The U.S. Supreme Court Ruling on Amendment 2 (both supporting and dissenting opinions)
• Read more about Anti-Gay Initiatives

Rio Blanco County (You asked, here's what's there!)

• Where in the World is Rangely, Colorado?
• Colorado Northwestern Community College
• Meeker Colorado Chamber of Commerce Page

Recitation 10: The Geography of Nations and States

• Internet Review of Political Geography
• Europa Homepage "A WWW-server offering information on the European Union's goals and policies."
• ARENA Advanced Research on the Europeanisation of the Nation-State
• Journal of World-Systems Research

War in Iraq

• Truth, War, and Consequences The website for a Frontline Documentary on what led to the second war in Iraq and the causes of the failure to secure peace in the aftermath. The entire program can be viewed online.
• Streets of Fear The author visits Bhagdad and describes the fear that pervades the city even as the city itself goes about its daily business. Pay attention to the author's comments on the state.

Soverignty and China

• Clinton and Jiang in Their own Words: Sharing a Broad Agenda From the New York Times (If you haven't already you'll need to register with the Times to view this. It's free.) See also the special collection of articles on President Zemin's visit to the US.

Former Yugoslavia

• Bosnian Virtual Field Trip From George Mason University--detailed yet easy to understand introduction to conflict in Bosnia
• Bosnia: Uncertain Paths to Peace A web special from the New York Times (requires free registration). "An interactive photo essay by the French photojournalist Gilles Peress, with the photographer's narrative,documents the last weeks of the siege of Sarajevo in February and March, including the exodus of Serbs from the suburbs from which the siege had been mounted."
• Bosnia 101 A primer on the events in Bosnia
• Beserkistan--"An Interactive Newsmagazine" focusing on Bosnia. Covers events January to August 1996

European Union

• The European Union--What is it what does it do? From the French government. See especially The European Union and the Free Movement of Persons

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